Nabakalebara: Legends and Reality

Shall live to write: Barendra Krushna Dhal

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

The 75th year in Barendra Krushna Dhal’s life was welcomed in a unique way. His wife Snehalata Dhal, and other members of the family including Tirthankar, Sanghmitra, Amitabh, Lopa, Siddharth, Priti and Vivekanand Jena surprised the eminent journalist, author and founder of book-fare movement with a very insightful book on him which Orissa’s former Chief Minister Janaki Ballav Patnaik, who has returned home after completion of his term as Governor of Assam, inaugurated in the jam-packed hall of the Institute of Engineers, Bhubaneswar on January 4 in the evening. As many as 62 eminent persons have put their views on Dhal in this book, captioned ‘Ananya Barendra.

President of Orissa Sahitya Academy and his closest colleague in Book-fare movement Satakadi Hota graced the event as Guest of Honor and senior journalist Pradosh Pattanayak conducted the proceeding. As token of appreciation from the audience, strong admirers of Dhal including Dash Benhur spoke of their personal experience with him.

Answering the surprise felicitation, which his family had kept a secret till the last moment, Dhal went over his journey into journalism and his involvement with Lekhaka Samukhya that ultimately generated the book-fare movement in Orissa.

“Till end of my life I will continue writing”, he said; but instantly added, “I shall live to write”.

Chief Guest Mr. Patnaik gave a very affectionate note on Mr. Dhal the audio of which we post here in its entirety.

WHY ORISSA, NOT ODISHA?

In these pages, the English spelling of the name of our motherland and mother tongue will remain Orissa and Oriya as before, instead of changing into Odisha and Odia.

Law has changed Orissa and its language Oriya to Odisha and Odia in English respectively. This is a very irresponsible law created by politicians having no knowledge on and devotion to classical uniqueness of Oriya language. When this bad law was on the anvil, we had opposed the proposal through several articles in these pages on grounds shown therein. And, when finally the law was created, we took it as an act of stupids. We stick to our observation and vow not to honor the bad law, come what may. For us, the classical uniqueness of our mother tongue Oriya is more important than the law enacted to change it. So, here we shall continue to use the words Orissa and Oriya notwithstanding enforcement of the law that has wrongfully changed them to Odisha and Odia. This is why this site will continue as orissamatters.com instead of converting into odishamatters.com on the strength of our devotion to the mother tongue which no law can change.
-Editor